mallorys_camera | The Great Raymond/Pe Ell Basketball Tournament

<>Jump: Raymond, WA → Yelm, WA City Park – 85 miles
Go out of the lot the way we came in… arrows to RIGHT onto HWY 101 SOUTH
LEFT in Raymond onto HWY 6 EAST to I-NORTH
Take EXIT #88A – OLD HWY 99 NORTH to Tenino
HWY 507 NORTH/EAST to Yelm… arrows to the lot

Yesterday circus played Raymond, Washington – another place steeped in Personal History. Site of the great Pe Ell/Raymond Basketball Tournament. Claud Hudson got bored after he hitchhiked to Pe Ell from Jersey to visit his sister, the poisonously beautiful femme fatale Emily. Dropping 20,000 µg of Owsley’s finest Lightening Bolt and walking to Chehalis on the railroad tracks – okay, crawling to Chehalis on the railroad tracks – was not Claud Hudson’s idea of a good time. He liked sports and driving in cars.

You had to be zoned on acid to play – that was the only rule. Otherwise you didn’t have to dribble, you could carry the ball, you could grab a fucking chair and stand on it to make baskets – though of course the rival team could pull it out from beneath you if they wanted to. Really it was more like a game of Capture the Flag and it went on without stopping for three days.

Very little of that Raymond is left. Probably a good thing. Claud went back to Plainfield and became the owner of a very successful limosine service. (He built it from scratch.) Emily became a stock trader.

Later this morning I drove through Pe Ell. I think this is the house where I spent that summer. But I can’t be sure.